The ICC's new guidelines came into play for the first time on Sunday (July 20) after England's Dom Sibley applied saliva on the ball by mistake on the fourth day of the second Test against West Indies at Old Trafford.

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Sibley's act prompted on-field umpire Michael Gough to sanitise the ball quickly. The incident happened during the 41st over of West Indies’ first innings.

The ICC has temporarily banned the use of saliva to shine balls in order to avoid the potential on-field COVID-19 spread.

According to the new rules, teams are given a warning and going further a second offence would attract a five-run penalty.

This is the first series to be played under the new regulations forced by the global COVID-19 pandemic and players from across the world have acknowledged that it will be difficult to curb their natural instinct of putting saliva on the ball.

Ahead of the second Test, England off-spinner Dom Bess had admitted that playing with the new restrictions wasn’t easy in the series opener.

“It’s certainly different. The first Test was a great challenge in terms of how we can get the ball swinging and how we can sort of look after the ball with just sweat. As a fielder who sweats a lot, I took responsibility to try to shine the ball. I guess the real challenge with it was making it not dull and not putting too much sweat on the ball,” Bess had said.

Coming to the match, England rode on Ben Stokes’ 176 and Sibley’s 120 to post 469/9 (declared) in the first innings. In reply, West Indies got bowled out for 287 while the hosts are 37/2 in the second innings, leading the visitors by 219 runs at stumps on Day 4.